Absolver: A
Neat little open-world brawler with a *really* nice combat system, learning curve was extremely steep but once I got the hang of it I was completely hooked. Very bare bones, but in an age of games stuffed full of collectibles and side missions, it was kinda nice to have a game that just focused on one core mechanic that clearly had a lot of love and work put into it. Highly recommend.

Horizon Zero Dawn: B-
Combat and design alone was worth the price of admission but once i'd levelled up my skill tree a bit I found myself getting bored with story missions and just fanging around the place fighting giant robot dinosaurs. This eventually got boring too, but that took a good number of hours. Didn't finish it but it was fun.

Assassins Creed Origins: A-
Always held a flame for this series even though each game has been pretty broken in its own ways. This is probably the first one that isn't broken. Big overhaul was mostly a win, combat is a million times better and the levelling system does a lot to make play rewarding. Nice to see a big name series do some soul searching and make a better game for it.

Injustice 2: D+
Yeah the customisation is good and the ultimate move animations are OTT joy, but when the core combat isn't fun, what's the point?

Shadow Of War: B+
Pretty muddled in its delivery, but carries enough of its predecessors' DNA that it doesn't matter. Recruiting an army and spending hours preparing for a big siege is lots of fun and really gratifying, but I gotta say the big battles could do a little more to play as epically as they're presented.

Location: YOU SAID THERE WAS WATER ON THE MOON AND INSTEAD IT'S JUST MORE GODDAMN COCKSUCKING

Posts: 1,012

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sonic Johnny

Injustice 2: D+
Yeah the customisation is good and the ultimate move animations are OTT joy, but when the core combat isn't fun, what's the point?

Opposite. The combat is a lot of fun to me, I love the roster, and I was really looking forward to the customizing aspect...but I don't have forty hours a fucking week to to roll for rare costume parts or to constantly check back in to see if there are events for my character to get me good stuff. Life's too short to spend months on months playing one single game to death, not my thing.

SNES remains my nostalgic favorite system of all time, and I bought the original harvest moon when it came out, so ive been interested in this game for a long time. Glad I finally get a chance to play it. Initial feeling is that it takes everything good about the harvest moon series (relaxing pastoral setting, satisfying incremental progression in agricultural and interperonal realms) but removed all the shittier elements (bad music, clunky boring work animations, overly cutesy anime characters) to produce the ultimate farm sim

I'm playing through Nier: Automata right now. Tried it on Normal, got frustrated, dropped the difficulty down to Easy and now the game is a cakewalk...but I'm enjoying it at least. Pretty good for postapocalyptic steampunk Blade Runner with samurai swords.

I also bought the remastered Uncharted trilogy, the remaster of The Last of Us, Overwatch so I can play with my friends who have it only for PS4 (game is weird on consoles; how can people play it with controllers?!) and Persona 5.

Of course I'll be buying Death Stranding and the FFVII remake whenever they arrive.

Buy extra carry capacity as soon as you can. Don't worry too much about creating a high yield farm in the first year cause you'll get skills/learn how to make new stuff that will make it a lot easier to get more produce for less effort. Start grinding some artisan crafts early (jams etc) cause once you get that skill maxed out you're on easy street financially. Check out the community centre, get a gist of the stuff you need to complete those challenges - even if you're not looking for that stuff actively straight away, you'll stumble across lots of it in your travels and it'll take you a few in-game years to get through all those challenges so lay inroads early. Don't hesitate to just bust out the guidebooks - there's sooooo much stuff to play around with that trial-and-error, while rewarding, can also just be time and resource consuming.

OH and - don't worry about investing too much time into the mining/fishing elements straight away - you'll have plenty of time to do that shit in winter, and without something to work towards and fill your days up with the whole season can become a total slog

Still in spring of year 1, been waiting forever for my stupid beans to yield, so been hitting the mines but i'll shift my focus to jams/crafts, and continue to visit linus who is my fave character rn along with pam the grumpy alcoholic

PROS:
Two controllers included (the NES classic only packed in one) and longer cables than the NES Classic.
Flawless reproductions of classic games.
The ability to save states like on an emulator (though the execution of said ability is lacking).
21 games total, many if not most of which still hold up well today, with at least six or seven being all-time greats.

CONS:
No Chrono Trigger.
The cables on the controllers are still too short. Wireless controllers would have been nice.
No Chrono Trigger.
The only means of returning to the main menu is by hitting the Reset button on the console, which, also, is the only way to access a game's save state (there should have been a method implemented so you could do both of these things from the controller).
No Chrono Trigger.
The flimsy excuse of a flap that covers the controller ports is a candidate to be broken off.
No Chrono Trigger.
Neither Star Fox game really stands the test of time, the Kirby games are too gimmicky, and Super Ghouls N Ghosts is likely too punishing a game for many players.
Like the NES Classic, no (legal) method of adding other classic SNES games to the system, which is disappointing, considering there were plenty of glaring omissions from the pre-loaded library of games (ActRaiser, SoulBlazer, NBA Jam, Flashback, Final Fantasy II, Mortal Kombat II, Donkey Kong Country II, Killer Instinct, Aladdin, Secret of Evermore, Ogre Battle, Breath of Fire, and there's one more...arguably the best game ever made for the system...what was it again...?)
No Chrono Trigger.